JackC

Forget the V8. If you want automotive audible porn, you'll be needing the BRM H16

Forget your Lambo's or you tin pot Mustangs, I'll take one of these. They come in at about $15M if you can find one.

Ghostview is free and will convert pdf to ps and back again. http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

Thank you captain obvious. For some reason unknown to me, America has no interest in producing top tier racing cars. Instead they buy them from the UK. Newman Haas racing, built by Lola cars, UK. Chevrolet Indy car engines, built by Ilmor, UK. Ford indy car engines, built by Cosworth, UK. BARf1, built in the UK. Even Ferrari F1 engines were built in the UK until the Tifosi found out. Ferrari then shipped the plant and UK workforce to Maranello to shut them up.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-scientists10feb10,0,4954654.story?coll=la-home-nation

BARf1, Brackley, Northants, UK.

Most Indy cars are designed and built in the UK.

PC without a doubt. Software is available for free and all the parts are available off the shelf, cheap. Mac software is much harder to find, (some doesn't even exist) and generic parts are virtually unobtainable. A Mac would have to be a whole lot better than a PC for me to swap. They're not.

Well I don't know how the research grant system works in the US but if it is so heavily biased by the political winds then something should be done about it. But the US is not the only country producing research. Just about every developed country on the globe is working on this and their research is available to anyone. If you feel that US research is so politically motivated, read some papers by non-US authors. Or are you saying the entire global research effort is politically slanted in the same direction? And can you prove it? Yes... I do. It is unscientific to approach a problem if you know what you WANT the outcome to be. If I want the root cause of GW to be fosile fuel consumption, then I can figure out away through deductive reasoning and isolated experimentation to make that be the reason. Yes it is unscientific, which is why most scientists don't make the data fit the answer. If someones research is so ambiguous that it can be made to fit whatever answer they want, then that research is piss poor quality and should never get past the referees. People who produce fake data to support their theory get found out like the esteemed Dr. Schon. Good quality research is not ambiguous, does not rely on false data and is reproducable by anyone who wants to try. Hence I do not take "any research findings can conclude what you want them to" to be a serious statement. I hope that your research does not turn out such that you can conclude whatever you want. So far you have given me plenty of talk about how biased and politically motivated scientific research is but absolutely nothing about the science itself. The reduction of solar flux seems to be backed up with plenty of evidence but you seem to be saying that this is not to blame for the decline in the pan evaporation rate. If this is the case, then what is the cause? If you have evidence to support your position then lets hear it. If you don't, then you seem to be dismissing other peoples research based solely on your distrust of the system, of which you are an active part. But if you cannot come up with evidence to support your position, why shouldn't I file it along with all the other pseudo-science junk mail I get?

Presumably because you are a scientist and that's what scientists do. If political types are blocking your publications then that is a problem. If you know of journals or institutions that are politically biased to the point of censoring papers due to their political implications, I'd like to know who they are so I can avoid them. Personally I do not know of anyone who's papers get rejected because they don't tow the party line. Papers usually get dumped because the science is shit. You do understand how the peer review system works? Do you expect me to take this point seriously? For forcasting of chaotic systems, this is true. However, a measurement of the pan evaporation rate is not a chaotic system and that has decreased by ~20% in some areas. This should be well within experimental error even if my gran was doing the measuring. Biased how? Are you saying there is some conspiracy to mute research that doesn't fit with someones agenda? Or are you saying that the drive to get publications leads people to falsify the data? Not all scientists are of the same quality as Hendrik Schön. What do you mean "inherently biased"? As atmospheric physics is not my area of expertise, I will have to look this lot up. That would seem to be the idea behind science. Agreed. But that doesn't mean we should stop trying. Look at the data, come up with a hypothesis, test it and check it aginst new data, then refine or rewrite until you have a theory that works. If new data appears that falsifys the theory, then go back to the drawing board. The usual rules apply here. Sure it would be nice to have ENVISAT and Meteosat data going back a thousand years or more but you have to work with what you've got. Ice core samples are a source of data that we can use to look back over thousands of years, why discount it? Are you research active? If so, do some science, write some papers and get your point across. Bitching about the system on dz.com has to be one of the least productive methods I can think of. So, do you have any evidence to back up your claims that the system is "inherently biased", "flawed and inaccurate" and politically motivated or are you just blowing hot air? You seem to be saying that the results on the reduction of solar flux are wrong. Where is your evidence?

It says in your profile that you are an atmospheric physicist. Presumably you do not dismiss other peoples research unless you have good reason to, but your tone implies that you consider this work to be laughable. So as a professional physicist, what is it about this research that you do not agree with and what evidence do you have to suggest that their conclusions are wrong? Citations would be appreciated.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_prog_summary.shtml http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1108853,00.html http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040517/pf/040517-7_pf.html

Glad to hear it. Both of them have quite clearly stated that they do not believe in a personal god. But not discounting the possibility is not the same as actively believing though is it? I do not discount the possibility that I am just a brain in a jar, plugged into a matrix-like computer program. I do however consider this to be so unlikely that I occupy none of my time thinking about it. I am atheistic towards the brain-in-the-jar hypothesis. One of the attributes of your god is omnipresence. Therefore if god can be proved to not-exist in just one place, then your god does not exist at all. Despite your unsubstantiated assertion, there is no scientific evidence to suggest that god exists in any place we have yet looked. So in the abscence of evidence to the contrary, an omnipresent god would seem to be indistinguishable from non-existence. Why stop there, why should there be a god for the religious to describe as being the cause of the universe? Positing a god as the reason merely sweeps the problem under the carpet. Whats wrong with "I don't know"? He would if he said "godidit". That is not what it sounds like although I will take your word that you honestly believe that. Isn't that rather closed minded? What grounds do you have for discounting the possibility of chance? Many of the building blocks for the universe to have evolved by "chance" are there, all proven and accepted, yet you dismiss them out of hand in favour of an unprovable assertion. In your own words "I nor anyone else can?t scientifically and unequivocally prove to you that God exists" and you still believe it. I find that extremely weird.

Try submitting a letter to any respectable scientific journal saying "godidit" and see how far you get.

Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition atheism: Disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a god. disbelieve: 1. trans. Not to believe or credit; to refuse credence to: a. a statement or (alleged) fact: To reject the truth or reality of. deny: To contradict or gainsay (anything stated or alleged); to declare to be untrue or untenable, or not what it is stated to be. Logic. The opposite of affirm; to assert the contradictory of (a proposition). To refuse to admit the truth of (a doctrine or tenet); to reject as untrue or unfounded; the opposite of assert or maintain. To refuse to recognize or acknowledge (a person or thing) as having a certain character or certain claims; to disown, disavow, repudiate, renounce. Despite the theists attempts to persuade us otherwise, the word atheist does not necessarily means a person who denies the existence of a God. Many atheists would consider themselves to simply lack a belief in God. This distiniction is subtle but important. If I were to deny the existence of something, I must first have knowledge of what it is that I am are being asked to affirm before I can thoroughly dissmis it. But the lack of a belief in God may just mean that the word 'god' is of no importance to me or holds no meaning for me. This is quite different from stating that no god exists. Therefore atheism cannot be described as a belief as such, but rather the lack of belief. The prefix 'a' in 'atheist' should be read as in other Greco-English words such as 'amoral,' 'atypical,' or 'asymmetrical'. The prefix 'a-' can mean 'not' (or 'no') or 'without.' So by definition, an atheist is simply someone who is either not a theist or someone without theism. To say that 'an Atheist is someone who believes there is no god' or that 'atheism is a belief system the same as any religion' ignores the very definition of the word.

Here's one I made earlier. 11.5" hira-zukuri tanto. Forged from W2 carbon steel, diiferentially hardened and tempered. Got some quite interesting activity in the hamon if I do say so myself. One day I'll get around to making that pattern welded Yamashiro tachi I've been promising myself. Best get busy before they ban it.

What about putting a pseudo-proxy server between your browser and the web? Junkbuster or proxomitron for instance?

You could try google translate. Just set the options to translate from swahili (or some other unlikely language) to english. The firewall thinks you are going to google and google doesn't translate anything that isn't in swahili, so the website shows up as intended. Net result, no firewall. If that doesn't work, try a web based proxy server like webwarper or proxify.

In reply to Pajarito There are many criticisms of Genesis, you have probably read some of them. If not, I'm sure you can drive google.com just as well as me. You think abortion is morally wrong and you may have a point. Is capital punishment equally wrong? "You shall not kill". You were in the Army right? No moral dilemma there then? Thanks. Wanna compare educations? In reply to Billvon Moby Dick is a good story with some interesting lessons, but I don't pray to a white whale. Errors in translation, errors in recalling the oral tradition, errors in the science. By extension there must be a good chance of errors in the morality as well? Your "Master Handbook of Electronic Tables and Formulas" doesn't make claims like those who divide by zero should be stoned to death. The bible does make claims about the origin of the universe. Is the origin of the universe a scientific or a moral question? Likewise. I think the Bible makes attempts at science, you don't. So be it.

Nevertheless, the Bible does encroach in scientific territory. Genesis is a scientific theory and it does not fit the evidence, therefore it is a crap scientific theory. You say the Bible gives us the big picture. I say that on close inspection of the details in your big picture, it's actually a load of bollocks. YMMV. I somehow knew you would bring this up and therein lies my point. You pick and choose which of gods laws you follow, to do this you have jumped on the division between moral, ceremonial and civil law and descided that some do not apply to you. Does it not bother you that you have to produce ever more convoluted ad hoc reasons why the laws laid down in the Bible somehow don't apply? Now me on the other hand, instead of all these ad hoc reasons why god wanted this then but not now cos he sent himself to appease himself so that he wouldn't have to throw his creation into the hellfire that he himself created for the expressed purpose of punishing his creation which he actually loves, I just figured that the Bible makes absolute and complete sense if you realise it is grade one bullplop. Again YMMV.

Bill, you keep saying that but it is simply not true. The Bible does indeed attempt to be a science book. It makes existence claims and that puts it firmly in the scientific. Take the virgin birth for example, Jesus either had a corporeal father or he didn't. There is no morality in this, it is simply a question of cold, hard, scientific fact. As another example, Genesis proposes an explanation for the origin of the universe. This subject we call cosmology and that again is cold hard science. To say that the Bible is not a science book is blatantly false. It is science book, but most definately it is a diabolically bad science book. As a book on morals, the Bible is pretty rubbish too. How many people actually think it is morally acceptable to stone adulterers, execute gays, and punish the grandchildren of offenders? People activley ignore the parts they don't like because it doesn't fit with their morals. How can the Bible be the definitive guide when the morals it defines are so repugnant to so many people? So the Bible fails as a science book, fails as a book on morals, what possible use is left for it?

After many years of Judo and Sil Lum Kune Kung Fu, and plenty of rough boozers, I can say that Tonto is 100% correct.

There have been plenty of discussions about canopy measurements and as far as I know, no general consensus of opinion as to which one is the definitive answer. I know that different manufacturers measure their canopies in different ways. Para-gear independently measured a bunch of them and put their findings in a chart. I guess my question was more along the lines of "is there some standard by which canopy size and therefore wing loading can be measured?" If there is no definitive size for a canopy, wing loading calculations could be + or - 0.1 depending on whos numbers you use. Does this make any sense?

So if both canopies are the same size, which number do I use to work out wing loadings, 170 or 190?